


Walking Some New Roads

by thatsrightdollface



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Birthday Fluff, Fic, Fluff and Angst, I wanted to talk about one particular thing Lucio says in his route, I've only played what exists of Lucio's route all the way through so far, Literal Sleeping Together, Other, This is a, but here this is anyway!!!!, honestly it would probably be more honest to tag this, i'll explain in the notes, let's all imagine it's Lucio's birthday okay?, plus some of the side stuff/a little bit of Asra's route, so the minute you click on this story it becomes magically January until you click away, the Apprentice's gender is unspecified -- could be anybodyyyyy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27792442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: You wake up beside Lucio Morgasson and smudge a little of last night’s eyeliner off his nose gently with the side of your thumb.
Relationships: Apprentice/Lucio (The Arcana)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 66





	Walking Some New Roads

**Author's Note:**

> You know that scene where Lucio offers to sell the Apprentice his whole soul, so he won't have to pay his debts?! I was thinking about what that could look like. There's something really pretty about handing your whole soul to someone 'cause you know they'll take care of it.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this, and I'm so sorry for anything and everything I might've gotten wrong!!! Also, I hope you're staying safe and doing well!!!

You wake up beside Lucio Morgasson — formerly Count of Vesuvia, formerly the Scourge of the South’s swaggering Prince Monty, formerly the goat-skinned specter whispering to you from a bedchamber buried and seething in his own ruinous ashes — and smudge a little of last night’s eyeliner off his nose gently with the side of your thumb. His makeup got all smeared with sweat and revelry, with bubbling-over champagne and dancing, with his first actual on-purpose birthday party since the Masquerade years ago when he brought the Devil in. When he was burned to ashes in his sickbed, gambling the whole unknowing universe in exchange for a new body that wouldn’t keep dying so painfully on him, shivery with plague; when he stopped recognizing his face in the mirror, and tsk-ed at his own goat-horns, wondering how badly his friends would miss him. What they’d do to bring him back. 

Until they didn’t.

 _Until you did._ Lucio’s smiling a little in his sleep, curled on his side, hands limp between you on the silky wine-stained sheets. (When you first met him, his sheets were ashes, and his windows were ashes, and one of his hands — the golden prosthetic one — had been tucked away out of sight. Buried in ashes. It’s hard to think about, now. Makes you want to grip his arm protectively, or maybe kiss his forehead, softly shaking him awake so you can hear his voice.) Last year, Lucio attended the Masquerade disguised as “Lorenzo,” and spent most of it trying not to die... for years before that, he’d spent his birthdays among his own ashes, or trying (failing) to tear himself away long enough to feel a little like the person he knew again. He told you about it, not meeting your eyes, once. He’d waited for Nadia, or Valerius, or... someone... to come pour a drink out for him, maybe. To leave some cake, an offering to the dead — though he wasn’t dead, not _traditionally_. In the south, where Lucio was born, it would’ve been miserably cold on his birthday. The middle of winter. Not in Vesuvia. The air had been hot and stale, in that ruined bedchamber, and Lucio hadn’t needed to breathe but still he’d felt that non-existent breath catch in his chest again and again and again like a strangled scream. 

Not a very good birthday, right? And you know Lucio’s had some pretty terrible birthdays. His palm is much softer than it used to be, when he was out getting into fights all the time, and he doesn’t like that he’s looking older. He _did_ ask one of his favorite artists to paint him, ah, a little more realistically lately, though, which makes you think maybe he’s proud of how far he’s traveled away from the young Prince Montag who sold his parents’ hearts for a gift of power and pestilence. Who sold away pieces of his soul to all sorts of hungry scheming creatures; who dealt with the Devil before ever asking the price. He knows you’re proud of him, however his age is showing through. You’ve made sure he knows. 

Lucio stared his guilt in the face, over the course of this last year, and told you he should’ve given you his truths from the beginning, though of course he didn’t want you to see them when you looked at him; Lucio wears a lotion you make for him, now, spicy-sweet, sharp and warm all at once, like you know he can be. You snicker when you find a leaf in his hair — he got lost in the palace hedge maze last night, stumbling after you, drunk and laughing. You were trying to get back to him, actually, but he kept misjudging where your voice was coming from... kept turning the wrong way, or getting himself all spun around. Finally, you just reached straight through the hedge and grabbed his fancy fur cloak. 

“I’m right here,” you’d said. “Now, if you go back about ten steps and turn left —”

“Nah,” he’d said, and then climbed straight through the hedge into your arms. You held him as he wobbled in his new boots; you promised to magic the blister off his right heel, just hold still a second, okay? You held all of Lucio’s soul in your hands, too, once — all the pieces he‘d agreed to pay away like coin for power — and it was a golden burning thing, bucking like a dancing goat and then curled in your palms like it knew you. Calmed, when you called to him; born of fire, but refusing to burn your hands. Lucio sold all of that soul to you, and you poured it back into him; you buried your face against his neck when he shuddered awake again afterwards, eyes silvery clear but skin feverish, and you choked on wordless sobs because... you know... the gamble worked, and what the hell would you have done if it didn’t? If he was gone?

When you first met Lucio, his eyes were so red with the plague they burned through his ghostly eyelids. When you gave him back his soul, he said, “Damn, that felt weird...” and patted your back. Smoothed his hand up and down your spine, even though that hand was still shaking. He’d been terrified; he trusted you. “But hey, hey. I’m fine! Told you that would work!” 

Lucio isn’t the Count anymore, but Countess Nadia, his ex-wife, still keeps rooms set aside for both of you in the palace. That’s where you are, just now, with buttery sunlight soft across your skin through huge crystalline windows. Mercedes and Melchior — Lucio’s dogs, and your buddies, too, considering you’re all a family now — are sleeping by the side of the bed, curled up together with garden dirt on their white paws. You’ll have to clean them off, just as soon as you and Lucio get clean and ready for breakfast. You’ll drink sweet coffee by the fountains afterwards, maybe. Those fountains are still shaped like Capricorn goat-fish, like Lucio’s zodiac sign; there are still pieces of him all around this palace. You’ll thank Nadia again for hosting his party, and you’ll listen to her sly, muffled-laughter stories about recent political meetings, and eventually you know Lucio will tug your arm to go home. This palace was “home” for a long time, and the apartment above your magic shop doesn’t have _nearly_ enough gaudy golden table settings, but Lucio feels like a version of himself he likes, there. He told you so. He wants to be the guy you hang around more than he ever particularly wanted to be Count; it can be the two of you against the world, at home in the shop, and people won’t crowd you to confirm which Scandalous Former Count Lucio Rumors are or aren’t true.

There’s a huge portrait of you and Lucio next to the bed, here in your palace-rooms — you, Lucio, and of course both dogs, one to either side. No, it isn’t the one where Lucio looks his true age, though you’re in that one, too, and the artist painted him smiling at you like he’s just about to tell a bad joke. Most of the portraits Lucio commissions are monuments to a shared future, together. To what he hopes to be, as a man, as a partner; to that sense of belonging and value he was always chasing, even back when he made his first bloody deal under cold unforgiving moonlight.

You push yourself up and out of bed, and Lucio stirs behind you. Mumbles your name, drowsy and possibly a bit hungover. He can’t handle alcohol as easily as he could when he was young. The years give and take, both in turn. A chance to try again, to live and transform, but now his joints crunch a little more when he stands up. His knees were killing him on the last Hike of Doom you and the rest of your friends all took together. When they started planning another hike, though, Lucio still raised his eyebrows at you, asking whether you wanted to go. 

“Hey, Lucio,” you tell him. “Happy day-after-your-birthday.” 

In answer, Lucio flops over to grab your wrist. He brushes sleepy kisses along your knuckles, your fingertips — the only hands that have ever held his living soul — and says “Thanks,” except it doesn’t sound like he’s thanking you for the birthday wishes, not exactly, not anything so simple. You’ve been through so much together, just this last year... again, let’s not forget about that soul thing. 

You remind Lucio that Nadia will have food ready, probably. He says, “I hope there’s those red jam pastries. You know. With powdered sugar.”

“Mm. I dunno,” you say. “Wanna go see?” 


End file.
